After swimming in the lake and a few rounds of fetch at the Ithaca Dog Park on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Sophie, an eight-year-old plump English lab, shyly deposited a small pile of doo next to a bush. Her owner, Prof. Leon Kochian, plant biology, picked up the poop, dumped it into a free black bag obtained at one of the five bag dispensers in the Park and disposed of the evidence in a sky-blue bin labeled “compost” located at the Park’s entrance.

“We go through 5,000 of these [bags] a month,” Kochian said, closing the lid. Two women with a golden retriever and a poodle placed bags into the bin as he spoke.

“That adds up to about 1,000 pounds per month. That’s a lot of poop,” he added.

As Ithaca dog owners pioneer dog waste composting, even dog poop could now turn into profit.

Since the initiation of the poop composting project on Earth Day this year, an approximately six by six by ten feet heap of dog poop has been collected, according to Mark Wittig, manager at Cayuga Compost. The company will determine the composition of the compost and what it can be used for as the compost matures, he said.

Traditionally, mammalian waste is not used as manure because mammals are at the top of the food chain and, as a result of bioaccumulation, mammalian feces contain a lot of toxic heavy metals, microbes and parasites, Kochian said.

“Some farmers used to use human sewage sludge on fields, and that caused a lot of controversy,” he said.

Holy Crap!: Ithaca dog owners pioneer dog waste composting.However, Wittig is confident that it’s “highly unlikely” that the compost will turn out to be completely useless. Although selling the compost as manure for growfor growing food is probably not an option, some potential uses may include replenishing the organic components of topsoil at abandoned mines and nourishing trees and grass for beautification projects commissioned by the Department of Trans­portation. Kochian also suggested that the compost may be useful for nursery plants.

Before the composting project was initiated, dog waste at the Ithaca Dog Park — located across the water from the Ithaca Farmers’ Market at the edge of Cayuga Lake — was collected into plastic bags provided by Wegmans and disposed in dumpsters destined for the landfill.

“Besides being less environmentally friendly, the park staff who have to handle these receptacles hate that part of their job,” Tim Joseph ’73, Regional Director of Finger Lakes State Parks, stated in an email.

“We had a dumpster twice the size of that one and it would fill up in less than a week,” Kochian said while pointing to a typical residential dumpster in the distance. “We thought, we had to do something about it.”

And they did. Through the cooperation of Tompkins County Dog Owners Group and Cayuga Compost, dog owners no longer have to let pooch poop go to waste. At Cayuga Compost, dog waste from the Park is mixed with leaves and food waste and piled up in Trumansburg, where microorganisms naturally break down the mixture into carbon dioxide, water and biomass of much smaller volume.

The special bags used to contain the poop are produced by Biobags, a company based in Florida. “They are biodegradable and 100 percent made of corn,” Wittig said. “[They are] also poop-sized and black so you don’t have to see the poop when you hold the bag in your hand,” he added.

These bags cost seven cents each, and Cayuga Compost charges $1,000 per year for picking up compost bins weekly and running safety tests. With approximately 60,000 bags used a year, the costs of the project add up to about $7,000 per year, according to Kochian.

The dog composting project is funded entirely through donations from members of the county’s Dog Owners Groups. The nonprofit group’s $5 annual membership fee as well as the $3000 they raised from their Green Dog fundraiser earlier this year will allow the compost project to continue regardless of the quality of the mature compost.

Dog owners who frequent the Ithaca Dog Park are “extremely happy” with the compost program. Donation bins set up around the dog park have already collected well over $1,000 this year, Kochian said.

“We have near universal participation with patrons using the provided compostable bags,” said Joseph, who directs Finger Lakes State Parks. “I’m very pleased with the dog waste composting program, and especially with the fact that it is initiated and supported by the users themselves.”

“It’s a feel good sort of thing, people are still donating in this economy,” Kochian said as Sophie tumbled in the grass joyfully with seven other dogs. “It’s great to invest in dogs. They are an important part of the family.”